License Usage

[Migration User]

I was curious how license usage was esimated for Altiris Inventory Solution 7.1 SP2, Altiris Patch Management Solution 7.1 SP2, Altiris Software Management Solution 7.1 SP2 and pcAnywhere 12.6.

All of these solutions are showing our licenses completely used up, but I noticed we have 864 machines which havent checked-in in over a month. Someone mentioned to me a while back setting an asset's status to 'Retired' would free a license. After a certain amount of time, do these assets 'retire' themselves?

I was curious how other companies handle systematically cleaning up usage once they see they are nearing their license count. Eventually we may have to buy more licneses but I would rather do some house-keeping first.

Appreciate any feedback.

[Migration User]

you can set a settings in the purging settings that retires machines after x period of your choosing.

if you press settings > Notification Settings > Purging Maintenance > Purging Maintenance

there is an option you need to tick saying Purge managed computers reporting in to this NS, which have not reporting in X days/weeks/months

then below that select 'Retire the computers. All data will remain in the database. But these computers will no longer be managed by the Notification Server.'

that'll sort you out

[Migration User]

That worked like a charm. I appreciate your fast response. Now if an asset were to come back online, would the status revert back to Active from Retired?

[Migration User]

We do not have asset management installed on this NS box. Do you know which table holds the resource status? I'd like to be able to check that periodically.

[Migration User]

Hi, no problem with the help.

I believe agents that respond back in with a basic inventory set themselves back to active. What we do when we retire a machine is set the asset to retired then do a disk wipe so that it doesn't have anything on or respond. Machines that are out of the business for a period come back in to NS when they come back to the network people on Maternity are a good example of this.

The below article pretty much confirms what i thought happens:

If this is for Symantec Management Platform 7.x, if an agent is still installed on the computer, when basic inventory checks in, the status of the computer will automatically change to Active. Note: In SQL, the computer's IsManaged field is set to 1 when its status is Active (managed). If the  status is changed to Retired (no longer managed), IsManaged is set then to 0. This will revert back to 1 once the agent checks back in with inventory, however.

http://www.symantec.com/business/support/index?page=content&id=HOWTO52993

I too don't have Asset Mangement installed on NS, what i do to check over retired devices is run this report below:

DECLARE @v1_TrusteeScope nvarchar(155)
   SET @v1_TrusteeScope = N'{2E1F478A-4986-4223-9D1E-B5920A63AB41},{582029E2-FC5B-4717-8808-B80D6EF0FD67},{B760E9A9-E4DB-404C-A93F-AEA51754AA4F},{DDAB61D6-BDF8-43AB-9D6F-8AB6619F3363}'
SELECT
   [vri2_Computer].[Guid] AS [_ItemGuid],
   [vri2_Computer].[Name],
   [ajs3_vFixedAssetResourceStatus].[Status]
FROM
   [vRM_Computer_Item] AS [vri2_Computer]
      LEFT OUTER JOIN [vFixedAssetResourceStatus] AS [ajs3_vFixedAssetResourceStatus]
         ON ([vri2_Computer].[Guid] = [ajs3_vFixedAssetResourceStatus].[Guid])
WHERE
   (
      ([vri2_Computer].[Guid] IN (SELECT [ResourceGuid] FROM [ScopeMembership] WHERE [ScopeCollectionGuid] IN (SELECT [ScopeCollectionGuid] FROM dbo.fnGetTrusteeScopeCollections(@v1_TrusteeScope))))
   )
AND [ajs3_vFixedAssetResourceStatus].[Status] = 'Retired'
ORDER BY [vri2_Computer].[Name]

 

By default i think the status is just blank or null not active or retired, which isn't very helpful.

Hope this helps